Rebirth: A Second Chance
by DYlogger
Summary: Tim's back.  Stranger things have happened.


**Rebirth: A Second Chance  
****By: Dee Y.**

**_Disclaimer: I own a Young Justice computer wallpaper. That's it._**

**A/N: What a puny one-shot. Oh, well. I had a time and a word limit when I wrote it, so whatever. Pretend that everything in the Bat-verse happened around thirteen years before it actually did. And Jason died a second time with Steph, and Dana died, and so did Cass. So it's sorta an AU. But not really. And... you know the drill!**

* * *

Everything was dark.

Then, a slit of light darted in the sealed box. Tim reached up toward the light. With seemingly inhuman strength, he pushed the cover of the box open.

A rat skittered out of he box.

Tim followed, stepping on the muddy earth and cracking dried leaves. A slight fog misted over the ground. Tim surveyed his surroundings. Headstones were scattered over the dank area and the place smelled of decay. He was standing in a graveyard, and the box he had pushed himself out of was a coffin.

He wondered, with all his Bat-training, why he hadn't noticed that earlier.

A bat flew by, with three birds closely following it. An unusual combination. _I used to be just like one of them. So were Dick and Jason. Just… doing whatever the leader commanded._ Then his girlfriend, his brother, his brother's girlfriend, and his stepmother died.

So to get away from the pain of losing Steph, Jason, Cass, and Dana, Tim had taken his own life.

Tim smiled right before- _Wait, WHAT? I didn't kill myself!_

_This must be some kind of psychological mistake! My mind playing tricks on me after being- NO! NOT DEAD! I'll just go to my dad's… That should straighten things out._

Tim walked in the direction of his old house. It was amazing how well he knew the streets of Gotham after all these years of- HE NEVER DIED! It was only a mind hallucination- his mind was playing tricks again.

Tim knocked on the door of where he had lived. Somehow, the mansion seemed older without renovation- the walls were more cracked, the windows were dusty, and the paint was chipped.

It wasn't wasn't his father who answered the door, however. It was his former classmate, Bernard Dowd. Only, like the house, older (adult now) and more mature. Tim wondered how he could still recognize his friend after all… these… years…?

Tim was surprised to see the unusually cool Bernard as a scraggly middle-aged man who didn't seem to be taking care of himself. Tim had always imagined Bernard to be someone sophisticated when he grew up, like a fashion model spokesperson. And instead of the airy greeting Bernard usually gave to people he didn't know, he started at snapping at Tim, "Do you think this is funny?" he snarled, "Tim Drake was my best friend! He died fifteen years ago! If this is supposed to be some kind of sick joke to fuck with me, the get the hell out of here!" The door slammed shut in Tim's face.

Disgruntled and slightly scared, which was unusual for Tim, he ran. He would have kept running directionlessly had he not been stipped by a couple in their forties. The woman was in a wheelchair, being pushed by the man.

"Hey!" called the man, "why are you running?"

Tim turned and looked at him. Again, he recognized the face immediately. It wasn't ragged like Bernard's, but like everything else he had seen today, it was older.

This was his brother. His other brother; the one who did'n't die. "Dick?" he whispered tentatively.

Dick stared at Tim. "Timmy." It wasn't a question.

Dick pulled Tim into a fierce hug. Unlike all the other times Dick had hugged him, Tim didn't try to refuse this one.

The red-haired paraplegic woman next to Dick smiled wanly. "I knew this would happen someday- you coming back to life. It happens more than enough times in our line of work, but we didn't dare hope."

Tim grinned, smiling for the first time of the day. "Babs." He pulled out of Dick's hug. "So I really _have_ been dead- everyone's been saying so. But what happened?"

"We're… not sure. You fell off a building, but Bruce was too stricken to investigate it, like he was with Jason and Steph when they died, the second time for Jay."

Tim winced. "That… that was suicide."

"Oh, Timmy…" Dick pulled his little brother into another hug, and this time Barbara joined in. The two of them then lead Tim back to the cemetery where he was buried.

_Funny how I ended up back here_, Tim mused. Barbara bent down to a small headstone littered with dead roses and ivy and wiped off some of the dust.

The words read,

_Timothy Jackson Drake  
__1981-1995  
__Brother, Son, and Friend  
__We'll miss you_

"It's 2010 now," said Barbara.

_Fifteen years,_ thought Tim, _I've been dead for fifteen years. At least my headstone doesn't say 'A Good Soldier'_.

"Don't be so down and broody," said Dick. "Think of it as a second chance at life. To do what you couldn't."

_A second chance_, repeated Tim in his head. _To do things again. That might not be so bad._


End file.
